A brain dump about living and working on the edge of the social web.

5 posts from April 2007

April 28, 2007

I went to the Brickhouse open house last night. I showed up fashionably late, but things were still rolling. Saw many old friends and a smattering of the usual digerati. It's good to see Brickhouse finally taking shape. Though I think Caterina should be getting more credit for it than she has been. Brickhouse would not exist without Caterina Fake. It's great to see others involved though, and Salim is the perfect choice to drive it, so it will be exciting to see what comes of it.

Oh and San Jose Mercury... It's "Bradley Horowitz" not "David Horowitz". What's up with that?

April 17, 2007

So I've been slowly losing my hearing the past few years. I don't talk about it much, but it's just something I have to deal with. Genetics + lots of Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, and the like. I've noticed it getting a little worse lately. It's very subtle. I have to have people repeat themselves more often.

I always felt that technology would catch up with the problem, and it probably will. New hearing aids will be some kind of permanent implanted chip or something... that's cool. I just have one request to the person inventing it. Put in a mute button.

April 08, 2007

It's a lazy Easter Sunday in the afternoon. People walk slowly by the moderately busy coffee shop/espresso bar. There are tables outside near the sidewalk. Two tables near the door. At the first table, sits a tall African man smoking a hand rolled cigarette, surfing the Internet on his Dell laptop and listening to an iPod. At the second table sits a young Asian woman, quiet, staring off into space, and a middle aged scruffy Caucasian man with a laptop, coffee, and a cell phone connected to his ear by a white ear piece.

The scruffy man begins to speak, though it is not clear whether he is speaking to the Asian woman or to someone on his phone. He speaks thoughtfully, but with determination and some arrogance.

SCRUFFY MAN... yeah well the doctor said I needed surgery, but I didn't do it, and now my knee is just fine. You can't trust these guys. I wasn't going to pay for surgery just because a doctor told me I needed surgery... Yeah well the doc said I needed surgery and I told him to fuck off and I limped out of there on my crutches and never went back... You don't have back problems, just because some old lady with back problems tells you that you have back problems... You're fine it's just a muscle spasm... and if it's a slipped disc, then the chiropractor will just slip it back, no problem. Don't listen to some old lady. My knee is fine, I'm totally healed... Aliens came to visit me that night and took me away bodily, and I said to them, that if they were real, they'd fix my knee... and my knee's been fine ever since!

Oh, I guess I never told you that part... Yeah, the aliens came and floated above me, and I prayed to the ether for them to fix my knee. My knee is fine, no pain. So what does that tell you?... If they were real, I said, prove it and heal my knee. Prove it. So don't listen to old ladies with back problems. You're gonna be fine, you just have to be open... fuck the doctors...

April 04, 2007

Okay so some Twitter updates. A few posts ago I said that Twitter was bogged down by usage. This wasn't the case. For some reason, Twitter was blocking access to me. I cleared my cookies and everything was fine. Odd, but whatever.

I got my Cingular bill today. First I pay a shitload already for service. I swore that I had unlimited text messages. Apparently not. Twitter traffic cost me an extra $35. I'm glad I got tired of the constant pings and turned it off. Totally annoying.

A couple of free ideas for Twitter.

Allow me to choose who I get messages from between phone, IM, web. I can grok more on the web page than I can from my phone. I may want to only get updates from close friends there and on my IM.

Have a spammer sandbox. Clearly the public time line is getting spammed. Provide a way for users or super users to sandbox them. The spammers can play in the sandbox without knowing they're there and the rest of us don't have to see them.

That's all. I'm sure it's stuff that's being worked on. Most of all, I'm happy for those guys. It proves that simple wins. I love that!!

Obligatory Introduction

I'm David Beach and this is my blog. I'm a Product Manager, Information Architect, and founder of 12seconds.tv. I work for eBay Mobile. I'm also surviving lung cancer. This site is about my life online and some other junk... enjoy ;)